Category: Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts: Culling Netgalley Books

Posted July 16, 2015 by Charlotte in Random Thoughts / 2 Comments

I have a little confession to make (the very reason why I need to discuss culling Netgalley Books), when it comes to exam season I use Netgalley like it is window shopping. I see something I like and I click on the request button. This year was no different. I requested over 50 books (an absolutely shameful number) without really thinking that publishers would ever except my requests. They did, and in one day I had nearly 15 approvals. I felt a bit horrified not only because now I had all these books, but some of them I couldn’t even remember requesting and had to think why I wanted them in the first place. I’m fully blaming procrastination as a excuse here, it forced me to do it! Ever since I’ve felt like there has been huge pressure on me to read all the books on my Netgalley shelf and with constant recurring sickness, I decided to finally cull some of the books there. This partly to do with Rinn Reads awesome post regarding the improvement of the Netgalley Ratio and in her first bullet point […]

Random Thoughts: Learn Reading Speed

Posted June 3, 2015 by Charlotte in Random Thoughts / 8 Comments

This is probably old news to everyone. But I finally, after ages and ages, decided to update my kindle. And now I can ‘learn reading speed’. Not only does it tell me how long do I have left of the book, but also how long I have left of my current chapter. To be honest this is a little daunting. There now feel like there is pressure when it come to reading. Especially when I’m not reading fast enough so the time either goes up or it decides to stay at the same number for ages and ages. it got me thinking about my reading speed, not whether I’m a fast or slow reader, but whether my speed is affected by the book being read. This week alone I’ve taken three days to read evilly small book but only mere hours to read what I consider a door stopper of a book! And now that I can know how long a book could potentially take me to read, I find myself choosing books based on time rather than whether I’ll enjoy it […]

Random Thoughts: Taking a Blogging Break

Posted April 20, 2015 by Charlotte in Random Thoughts / 1 Comment

It’s been two weeks since my last post on here. And I feel incredibly guilty but at the same time so relieved. I need to take a blogging break. I needed to have a break from blogging because the pressure of juggling everything became, quite suddenly far too much. I had a huge essay due in, exams creeping closer ever day (that is still FREAKING ME OUT!), and the voices in my head saying, REVISE. But having no new posts made me really uncomfortable. I have a back-log of posts that need writing but feel like I have no time. Therefore I have made a promise to myself. I’m going to write up those posts. They may be spread out though out the next few months. But don’t worry there will be posts. But I’m going to take a blogging. break For the next few months I am going to have a break from all things bloggish. (Actually, who am I kidding?! I need to do something to procrastinate!). But the pressure is off. So I was wondering has anyone else ever taken […]

Random Thoughts: How do you Rate a Book?

Posted March 9, 2015 by Charlotte in Random Thoughts / 4 Comments

At the moment I feel like I have no idea how to rate a book. Should it be 4* or 3*? What happens when it is that in-between book, when it fits perfectly in the middle? Should I round up or round down? I hate using half stars, it feels in a way indecisive (to me!), like I can’t make a decision. I have the facts in front of me yet somehow the answer is not completely clear, there is a large amount of grey. Perhaps I’m being silly… My usual response to this issue is to bite the bullet and go for the highest one (should I really be admitting this?!). To give the book the benefit of the doubt, perhaps. After all a book is somebody’s baby and they worked hard on it. It’s only fair to give them some reward, isn’t it? But then I also have the issue of when I feel that I’ve given the book the wrong rating. At the time it felt correct but now something has changed. This normally happens when reading a series. […]

Random Thoughts: Missing My First Blogiversary

Posted March 2, 2015 by Charlotte in Random Thoughts / 6 Comments

Doing my round-up post on Saturday (for Feb) made me realise that I had somehow missed my blogiversary. And more than that, the fact that I have been blogging FOR ONE WHOLE YEAR! Or more now because I actually posted my first post on Monday 10th February 2014. How could I have missed it? How did I not even think about. And actually on Saturday it shocked me that I have been blogging for over a year. It was something that I wanted to do after following my friend’s amazing blog for a couple of years (and really I should say thanks for giving me a lot of advice!) but I did feel a bit nervous about starting – after all there are already so many blogs out there. To be honest I never expected to last the year, I thought it would be something that I enjoyed for a while and then after about 6-8 months it would peter out, I never excepted to love it so much, to constantly think of things that I could do, challenges to […]

Escapades of a Bookworm

Books, Films and Random Thoughts

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